Jonathan's Space Report No. 459 2001 Aug 26 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- STS-105 was launched on Aug 10 at 2110 UTC. MECO (main engine cutoff) was at 2218 UTC with separation of external tank ET-110 into a 58 x 234 km x 51.6 deg orbit. At 2248 UTC Discovery reached apogee and fired its OMS engines to enter a 155 x 233 km x 51.6 deg orbit; another burn at around 0100 UTC raised the orbit to 198 x 277 km. Meanwhile the External Tank fell back towards the Pacific and reentered at its first perigee at around 2340 UTC. Discovery docked at the Station's PMA-2 port at 1842 UTC on Aug 12. After some problems aligning the docking system, the docking ring was retracted and latched at 1905 UTC and the hatch was opened to ISS at 2042 UTC. Expedition 3 began on Aug 13 at 1915 UTC when the new crew's seat liners were installed on the Soyuz transport ship. The formal EX-2/EX-3 change-of-command ceremony was held on Aug 17 in Destiny. Barry (EV1) and Forrester (EV2) made two spacewalks from the external airlock on Discovery. EVA-1, on Aug 16, transferred the Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) device from the ICC carrier in the payload bay to the P6 truss on the station. Then the astronauts took two MISSE materials exposure experiment boxes from the ICC and attached them to the outside of the Quest airlock. The airlock was depressurized at about 1356 UTC and the duration was 6h18m (depress/repress), 6h10m (hatch open/close), or 6h16m (NASA rule). The second spacewalk on Aug 18 installed Orbit-Installed Handrails and Launch-to-Activation Heater Cables on Destiny. The cables are needed for the installation of the S0 truss to be launched in early 2002. The airlock was depressurized at about 1339 UTC and spacewalk duration was 5h31m (depress/repress), 5h24m (hatch open/close), or 5h29m (NASA rule). The Leonardo MPLM module was lifted out of Discovery's payload bay at 1326 UTC on Aug 13 and docked to Unity's nadir at 1554 UTC. 3300 kg of cargo from it was loaded on to the Station and 1700 kg of cargo was returned to it; it was unberthed from Unity at 1816 UTC on Aug 19 and berthed back in the payload bay for the return to Earth at 1917 UTC the same day. Discovery undocked at 1452 UTC on Aug 20 with the Expedition 2 crew aboard, leaving Expedition 3 on the Station. At 1830 UTC on Aug 20 the Simplesat satellite was ejected from a GAS canister in the cargo bay. Simplesat has a 0.3m optical telescope and a GPS attitude control system. It is intended to test methods for building cheap astronomical satellites and controlling them from a cheap ground station. As of Aug 25 the ground station was still having teething problems. Discovery landed at Kennedy Space Center at 1822:58 UTC on Aug 22. Landing was on runway 15, after a deorbit burn at 1715 UTC. The Expedition Two crew of Usachyov, Voss and Helms had been in space for 167 days. Discovery will now have some downtime for structural inspections. Its last maintenance down period was in 1995-1996. Atlantis is being stored in the VAB for a while since only three Orbiter parking spots are available in the Orbiter Processing Facility. The VAB has been empty of Shuttle stacks for a while during refurbishments, and the stack for STS-108 will start being built up this week on Mobile Launch Platform 1 in VAB High Bay 1; External Tank ET-111 is hanging in High Bay 2 and Endeavour will roll to the VAB sometime in late October. Recent Launches --------------- A classified Russian satellite was launched on Aug 24 by Proton-K from Baykonur. Launch time was 2034 UTC (although one wire report implied 2045 UTC, but that is less consistent with the orbital data). A Blok DM class upper stage put the payload, code-named Kosmos-2379, in geostationary transfer orbit after its first burn at 2152 UTC. A second burn was expected at 0310 UTC to put the payload in GEO. The payload is probably a Prognoz-class early warning satellite built by NPO Lavochkin, the Russian equivalent of the DSP satellites. Editorial: US - and others - Not Compliant With UN Resolution 1721B ------------------------------------------------------------------- In JSR 453 I criticized the US Government for its spotty compliance with the 1975 Convention on Registration of Outer Space Objects, which grew out of UN Resolution 1721B. This is not a new issue, Jim Oberg drew attention to it years before I did, but it's worth re-airing the facts in this time when strategic treaty regimes are under reconsideration. However, the story is now being repeated by other news outlets, sometimes in stronger terms than I would use. I have therefore put together a more detailed statement at http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/un/untxt.html to clarify what I'm saying. My intent is to draw attention to the importance of openness in the military use of space and to call on all countries, not just the US, to be more careful about complying with their obligations under UN Resolution 1721 and the 1975 Convention. In the context of controversial developments in the military use of space, it is perhaps worth mentioning that JSR is intended as a non-partisan source of technical information, and if you spot my own admittedly strong views creeping in to the newsletter you are encouraged to give me a hard time about it. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jul 12 0904 Atlantis STS-104) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 28A Quest ) Station module Jul 12 2158 Artemis ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Expt. comms 29A BSAT-2b ) Ku video 29B Jul 20 0017 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk LC43/4 Comms 30A Jul 23 0723 GOES 12 Atlas IIA Canaveral SLC36A Weather 31A Jul 31 0800 Koronas-F Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32 Astronomy 32A Aug 6 0728 DSP 21 Titan 4B/IUS Canaveral SLC40 Early Warn 33A Aug 8 1613 Genesis Delta 7326 Canaveral SLC17A Space probe 34A Aug 10 2110 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39 Spaceship 35A Leonardo ) Aug 20 1830 Simplesat - Discovery, LEO Astronomy 35B Aug 21 0924 Progress M-45 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 36A Aug 24 2034 Kosmos-2379 Proton-K/DM2M? Baykonur LC200? Early Warn? 37A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-109 2002 Jan 17 HST SM-3B OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 Maintenance OV-104 Atlantis VAB STS-110 2002 Feb 28 ISS 8A OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-108 2001 Nov 29 ISS UF-1 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'